How am I spinning, LOOK AT THE NUMBERS.
It sucks when you use a 6970 or 6990, some top end gpu, and low resolution and low settings, I haven't said it doesn't, but be honest.... who has a top end gpu and games at low settings, no one.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested/7
This page is the "real world" tests, things you might use.
There are 15 benchmarks on that page, the 8150 is ahead of the 2500k in 8 of them.
Its faster than the 2500k in more than half the tests......... where am I spinning?
Now look at the ones it loses, single thread Cinebench 10 and 11.5....... no one on earth runs encoding programs single thread, no one, multithread, Bulldozer beats it...... thats not spinning thats the reality of it.
What about two more, x264 encoding, hugely important, loads of people encode on it, its an awesome codec. first pass is normally 2-3 threads, its a QUICK pass that does simple things, the 2nd pass is part of the whole test, its slower, it takes longer and it does the bulk of the work. Again Bulldozer is behind in the first pass and 30% ahead with AVX enabled(both chips can use AVX). XOP wasn't included, its a significant performance boost, only Bulldozer has it, its almost made for encoding.
The numbers mean nothing if you won't ever use a chip doing whatever it is.
Even without looking at what benchmarks the 2500k wins, Bulldozer still wins 8 out of 15 of those, more than half. When you realise that 4 of the ones the 2500k wins are utterly irrelevant...... you're now at Bulldozer winning 8 of 11 benchmarks on that page in anything anyone actually uses or cares about.
Seriously, do you want to be 30% faster in the first pass, which might take 5 minutes(so saving you 2 minutes) or 30% faster in the second pass which takes 30 minutes, thereby saving you...... 10 minutes, be honest, am I spinning or is Bulldozer faster when it matters?
I have also specifically said the following, if the 2500k had HT, it would be a no contest, if the 2600k or another HT having model was priced near, it would be a no contest. Considerint the 8120 is identical in every way to a 8150, with nothing disabled(and I said this LONG before launch) anyone would be mad to buy a 8150 over a 8120.
That leaves you with a £167 2500k, or a £167 8120, thats faster in more than half the benchmarks that are actually relevant to real world usage of the CPU......
In this situation, the 8120 is very possibly the better option, if you include Superpi, gaming in a way no one on earth games, and a few other completely pointless decade old benchmarks, the 2500k would rack up win after win.
In x264 encoding, 7zip/winrar/par 2, in gaming, in Excel and in rendering....... the 8150 is simply faster than the 2500k, those are all things many people do all the time, I never use 7zip tbh, but winrar/par 2 every single day, excel quite often, x264 encoding frequently throughout the week, etc. In things I actually do, rather than one off comparing to another chip, Bulldozer is faster than the equivilently priced Intel chip.
If I had £250 to spend, 2600k, no question, at £160ish, the 8120 is a pretty damn good option.